Muslims Are Their Own Worst Enemy

Muslims are numerous but powerless. Divisions among Muslims, especially between Sunni and Shi'ites, have consigned the Muslim Middle East to almost a century of Western control. Muslims cannot even play together. The Islamic Solidarity Games, a regional version of the Olympics, which were to be held in April in Iran, have been cancelled, because the Iranians and the Arabs cannot agree on whether to call the body of water that separates Iran from the Arabian Peninsula the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf.

Muslim disunity has made it possible for Israel to dispossess the Palestinians, for the U.S. to invade Iraq, and for the U.S. to rule much of the region through puppets. For example, in exchange for faithful service, Egypt receives $1.5 billion a year from Washington, which enables President Mubarak to buy off opposition. The opposition had rather have the money than support the Palestinians. Therefore, Egypt cooperates with Israel and the U.S. in the blockade of Gaza.

Another factor is the willingness of some Muslims to betray their own kind for U.S. dollars. Don't take my word for it. Listen to neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman, head of the Foundation for Democracy, which describes itself as "a private, non-profit organization established in 1995 with grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to promote democracy and internationally-recognized standards of human rights in Iran."

By now we all know what that means. It means that the U.S. finances a "velvet" or some "color revolution" in order to install a U.S. puppet. Just prior to the sudden appearance of a "green revolution" in Tehran primed to protest an election, Timmerman wrote that "the National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting 'color' revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques. Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds."†So, according to the neocon Timmerman, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, it was U.S. money that funded Mousavi's claims that Ahmadinejad stole the last Iranian election.

During President George W. Bush's regime it became public knowledge that American money is used to purchase Iranians to work against their own country. The Washington Post, a newspaper sympathetic to the neocon goal of American hegemony and war with Iran, reported in 2007 that Bush authorized spending more than $400 million for activities that included "supporting rebel groups opposed to the country's ruling clerics."

This makes the U.S. government a "state sponsor of terrorism." For confirmation, one of the U.S. paid operatives, who conducted terror operations in Iran, has ratted on his terrorist supporters in Washington. Abdulmalek Rigi, leader of the Baloch separatist group responsible for several attacks, was recently arrested by the Iranians. Rigi admitted that the Americans in Washington assured him of unlimited military aid and funding for waging an insurgency against the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Read his confession here: www.information clearinghouse.info/article24868.htm)

Possibly Rigi was tortured into confession. It is the American way. If the "light of the world," the "indispensable people," and the "shining city on the hill" tortures people, perhaps the Iranians do as well. Rigi's younger brother, himself on death row in Iran, has said that the U.S. provided direct funding to the separatist group and even ordered specific terrorist attacks inside Iran (see Antiwar.com, Feb. 23, 2010 and also news.antiwar.com/2009/08/25top-jundallah-figure-says-us-ordered-attacks and www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24868.htm)

The U.S. and its NATO puppets have been killing Afghan women, children, and village elders since Oct. 7, 2001, when the U.S. military invasion "Operation Enduring Freedom," a proper Orwellian title for a self-serving war of aggression, was launched. The U.S. installed puppet president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is bought and paid for with U.S. dollars.

The money that Washington gives Karzai finances the corruption that supports him.

Karzai's corruption and his treason against the Afghan people encourage the Taliban to keep fighting in order to achieve a government that serves Afghans instead of Washington, D.C.†(www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/24/AR2010022404914.html?wprss=rss_world)

Without the puppet Karzai selling out Afghans to Washington, the U.S. would have already been driven out of the country. With Karzai paying Afghans with American money to fight Afghans for the Americans, the war drones on into its ninth year.

Feminists, liberals, and naive American flag-wavers will say that what is written here is utter rot, that Americans are in Afghanistan to bring women's rights and birth control to Afghan women and to bring freedom, democracy and progress to Afghanistan, even if it means leveling every village, town and house in the country. We, "the indispensable people," are only there to do good, because we care so much for the Afghan people who live in a country that most Americans can't find on a map.

While this collection of naifs rants on about America "saving" Afghans from whatever, the White House and the Congress are conspiring against the American people to cut $500 billion dollars out of Medicare in order to give the money to private insurance companies. Jobless benefits are about to run out for millions of Americans, whose jobs have been moved offshore in order to make the rich richer. The U.S. Senate failed on Friday, Feb. 26, to extend jobless benefits. A single Republican Senator, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, was able to block the bill because it would cost a measly $10 billion and "would add to the budget deficit."

The "fiscally responsible" Bunning supports blank checks for wars of aggression (war crimes under the Nuremberg standard), and payoffs to investment banks for wrecking the retirement plans of most Americans. Bunning sends the bills to the unorganized and unrepresented Americans, whose jobs have been stolen by corporate offshoring of jobs and whose retirements have been stolen by the endless greed of the Wall Street investment banks.

What fool believes that the U.S. government, which is totally indifferent to the fate of its own citizens, cares so much about Afghanistan that it will spend blood and treasure to bring "progress" and "women's rights" to a country half a world away, while it drives its own citizens into the ground?

At Washington's behest, the government of Pakistan is conducting war against its own people, killing many and forcing others to flee their homes and lands. The Pakistani government's war against its own citizens has caused military expenses to soar, putting Pakistan's budget deep in the red. Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin ordered the Pakistani government to raise taxes to pay for the war against its own people. (news.antiwar.com/2010/02/12/us-treasury-dept-presses-pakistan-to-raise-taxes/). The puppet ruler, Asif Ali Zardari, complied with his American master's orders.†Zardari declared a broad-based value added tax on virtually all goods and most services in Pakistan. Thus, Pakistanis are forced to finance a war against themselves.

The "cakewalk war" in Iraq has lasted 7 years instead of the promised 6 weeks, and the violence is still ongoing with Iraqis killed and maimed nearly every day. The reason Americans are still in Iraq is because the Iraqis hate each other more than they hate the American invader. The vast majority of the violence in "the Iraq war" was committed between Iraqi Sunnis and Iraqi Shi'ites as they cleansed one another from neighborhoods.

The majority Shi'ites regarded the American invasion of Iraq as an opportunity to gain power over the minority Sunnis, who ruled under Saddam Hussein. Therefore, the Shi'ites never engaged the American invading forces. The minority Sunnis (20 percent of the population) gave most of their effort to fighting the Shi'ite majority, but in their spare time a few thousand Sunnis were able to inflict serious losses on the American superpower.

Finally realizing the power of lucre in the Arab world, the Americans put 80,000 Sunnis on the U.S. military payroll and paid them to stop killing Americans.

This is how the U.S. won the war in Iraq. Iraqis sold out their independence for American dollars.

Considering that a few thousand Sunnis were able to prevent superpower America from successfully occupying Baghdad or much of Iraq, had the Shi'ites joined with the Sunnis against the invaders, the U.S. would have been defeated and driven out. This outcome was not possible, because the Shi'ites wanted to settle the score with the Sunnis, who had ruled them under Saddam Hussein.

This is the reason that Iraq today is in ruins, with one million dead, four million displaced or homeless, and the professional class having fled the country. Iraq, under the American puppet Maliki, is an American protectorate.

As long as Muslims hate and fear one another more than they hate their conquerors, they will remain a vanquished people.

To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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Comments

Dear Mr. Roberts,
Thank you very much for such an interesting article. I really appreciate the work you're doing and the things you're saying.
I've been a Muslim for ten years now and I'm now based in Morocco where I'm teaching English and translating texts from Arabic into English. I'm also studying Islamic theology law and with private teachers, as I have been for several years, although my formal, i.e. university education, is a BA in Arabic and History.
Regarding the issue of Muslim unity, it is certainly not a new problem. It has existed from the very beginning. Sunni Islam has always been the overall majority of the Muslim community. The Shiites, Khawarij, Mu'tazilah and other sects have always been the minority. The Sunni majority has always viewed the minority sects to be a greater threat than any external threat, i.e. Christian, secular or other.
There are several instances of this in history but I think the clearest example is that of Salah u-Din Al-Ayyubi (Saladin). The Papal Bull that effectively declared the First Crusade was issued in 1095. The Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem and took it over in 1099. The Muslims, under Salah u-Din, did not take back Jerusalem until after the Battle of Hattin in 1187. What was going on? While the Crusaders were camped in Palestine Salah u-Din took an army from Damascus, past the Crusaders, and into Fatimid Shiite Egypt. The latter was defeated and it is because of this effort that Al-Azhar University, originally founded by the Fatimid Shiites, became a Sunni institution and remains so to this day. It was after this that Salah u-Din focused his efforts on the Crusaders.
A more recent example is how the Ottomans dealt with the emergence of the Wahhabi (later Salafi) sect that emerged out of the Najd, in the Arabian Peninsula, under Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman ruler of Egypt, launched a campaign in 1812 that lead to the end of the first Saudi state. The Wahhabi sect, according to most Muslim scholars, are the Khawarij of this age, i.e. a bloodthirsty, puritanical death cult. They take on different guises depending on their circumstances. Here in Morocco, a Sunni country, they are not allowed to have their own mosques, schools, TV stations, publishing houses etc. In places like the UK or the US, there is obviously more freedom of speech, which allows them to set up the aforementioned organizations and be a lot more critical of the Sunni majority. In places where there is no system of law or government, such as Iraq now, or Algeria in the 90s, these people just kill. Look at how many Muslims are being killed by Muslims, as you've indicated in your article.
The Saudi government may appear rather calm compared to what's happening in Iraq, but the origins of that state, that government, is a tale of bloodshed and massacre. (Please see a book called 'The Divine Texts' by Imam Mustapha ibn Amhad Ash-Shatti, translated into English, available at Amazon) Furthermore, the Saudi rulers have stolen and seized Muslim land. The Hijaz, i.e the area which contains Mecca and Medina, is Muslim territory. According to Islamic Law it belongs to the Muslims. Every Muslim has the right of free passage there. Issuing visas to Muslims and telling that they can only stay for a limited period of time, for example, to perform the Hajj, has absolutely no basis.
In short, the Ottoman Empire has disappeared, we have a Kharijite state in control of Makka and Madina and the Shiites are ruling over a massive area of land called Iran. Iran has a rich Sunni history. Some of our greatest scholars are Persians. The fact of the matter is that when Sunni Muslims allow these minority sects to proliferate and gain political control these sects become like a cancer that weaken sthe Sunni majority, and this allows external forces to come in and inflict even more damage. This is exactly what was happening when the First Crusade was launched. Salah u-Din Al-Ayyubi, being a theologian and jurist as well as military commander, and surrounded by other prominent theologians and jurists, understood this, and this is why he did what he did.
Compare the situation then with the situation now, except that now it looks a lot worse. Like the Fatimids of Egypt, Iran is now the large Shiite state. The Israelis are very much like the Crusaders but then we have the Khawarij ruling over Mecca and Medina and complete chaos in Iraq. Note: the Khawarij took over the Hijaz before the Zionists took over Palestine. If Salah u-Din was alive today I firmly believe that the first thing he would do is raise an army and head straight for Riyadh, depose the Saudis, give the Hijaz back to the Muslims, and then head straight for Tehran. By the time he's finished there the US Army would be on it way home and Tel Aviv would be a ghost town.
'United we stand, divided we fall' sounds logical but Islamic history has shown otherwise. Furthermore, Sunni Muslims have always been the overwhelming majority, roughly 90% of the Muslim community, so uniting with minority sects is not even necessary. These minority sects preach counterfeit versions of Islam and this ultimately hurts the Sunnis. I used to live in the UK and all the major organizations there are Salafi or Shiite, or some mixture of Salafi and Ikhwan Muslimin (and that's the start of another discussion!). Many Sunni leaders have mistakenly attempted to unite with the Salafis and Shiites and the wheels are starting to come off the bus. It's not working. It's not meant to and it's not supposed to. Those who are not Muslims, the majority of the UK, are running out of patience. They keep asking why the Sunni majority, the so-called 'moderates', have done nothing to significantly stamp out Salafi organisations in their midst. I am aware of the fatwa that was just issued by Dr. Tahir Al-Qadri, but this is just the beginning.
In conclusion, I have no personal issue with individuals who are Salafis or Shiites, or belong to other minority sects. My issue is theological first and foremost and I have and will continue to confront them on a theological level, and juristic as and when necessary. Sunni Muslims the world over should be doing this, within their own spheres of influence. Then, Lord willing, we will see some positive changes, and the Lord knows best!